Benedict put the site online himself by tapping an iPad, said Thaddeus Jones, project coordinator and an official with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Moments later the pope sent the tweet.

The 84-year-old pontiff was then shown the portal and its features in greater detail.

Jones described him as “interested and impressed,” and “clearly enjoying it.”

“He was clearly in awe at the new technology,” said Jones. “It’s a lighter moment but also an important one, it marks a new way of communicating.”

Benedict, though new to Twitter himself, has recognized the power of digital media throughout his papacy.

“Church communities have always used the modern media for fostering communication, engagement with society, and, increasingly, for encouraging dialogue at a wider level. Yet the recent explosive growth and greater social impact of these media make them all the more important for a fruitful priestly ministry,” he said last year, affirming the thousands of Catholic tweeters and bloggers who take their ministry online.

Catholicon, a church tech conference, is coming to Houston later this summer, and surveys show that the faith crowd in general is getting more and more connected online.

A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicates that religious Americans are getting much more active with social networking, up from 36 percent in 2008 to 52 percent in 2010, Elizabeth Drescher—author of Tweet If You ♥ Jesus—pointed out.

“Data from Pew and other research centers are only beginning to allow us to tease out the day-to-day effects of what I’ve called the Digital Reformation,” she said in a post on Religion Dispatches, “a revitalization of religion driven by the often ad hoc spiritualities of ordinary believers as they integrate practices of access, connection, participation, creativity, and collaboration encouraged by the widespread use of new digital social media into all aspects of daily life, including the life of faith.”